


Marked Men

by thedevilchicken



Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Amnesia, First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-07 03:04:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16400144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: After Casey, Tomas can't remember much of anything. All he knows is the name on his skin belongs to Marcus Keane.





	Marked Men

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Corvidology](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvidology/gifts).



"It's not that I think you're lying..." Tomas says, but Marcus knows that's not exactly true. Tomas thinks he's lying and he has done since this started, even if neither of them can figure out why he'd bother. It's not like it's been a pleasant few months, after all, all things considered. It's not like it's been easy. All it's done is test his patience, and test his resolve even more. 

"Yeah, it's just that you don't believe me," Marcus replies, and Tomas smiles at him wryly. 

"Something like that," he admits. 

It's everything like that, and it'd piss Marcus off except it lost its sting weeks ago. It'd piss him right off except the way Tomas is flushed across both cheekbones distracts him from it. The hot hot fucking heat of his body distracts him from it. His own defiant fucking shame distracts him from it. He'd ask God to forgive him except he doesn't think he's listening. 

They're in a cheap room in a cheap motel at the side of what might have been a busy road once, before the advent of the interstate that runs nearby. It's three in the afternoon and the blinds are drawn down over the window but it's not dark in there. It's barely even shady with the afternoon sun creeping in between the slats to spill across their skin in long, bright bars. 

It's not dark so Marcus can't pretend he can't see precisely what he's doing - what _they're_ doing, he supposes. Tomas hisses in a breath between his gritted teeth. Tomas's legs tighten up around his waist. There's a sheen of sweat over his skin that almost makes him luminous, like he's lit up from within. 

They're fucking. Marcus, palms braced against the mattress, arms straining to suspend himself, is fucking him in long, deep strokes that almost pull his back. 

They're fucking, and it's everything Marcus promised himself he wouldn't do. 

*

People call it Heaven's Alphabet. 

For a very long time, for thousands of years, nobody knew what it meant; the number of people with a mark living in any one area has always been low, so it was rare back then to meet even one person with one, let alone more. But then, at some point in the 1500s though exactly when is lost to history, the Catholic Church finally collected a sample size large enough to decipher it. The team of scholar-priests assigned to its study realised the marks are names, but not the owners'. The names belong to the owners' soulmates, or at least that's what people think. 

Priests aren't meant to have soulmates. Marcus knows that, because he's been a priest for years. Every time he's looked at his mark, he's known that fact, and once upon a time he tried to tell himself it made his dedication to the church more meaningful, but he's also fairly sure now that that's bollocks. People who've known about it have treated him like an impostor in a crisp white collar. He has a soulmate. He wasn't meant to be a priest. 

The mark, nestled in the crook of his left arm, says _Tomas_ in that indelible, ancient script.

"My name is Tomas Ortega," Tomas said, the day they met. "Father Tomas from St. Anthony's."

Marcus knew. He turned to him from his drawing, charcoal on his hands. 

"It _is_ you," Tomas said, and Marcus knew. 

"Where's your mark?" he asked. 

"I don't understand." 

Marcus tilted his head. "Your arm? Your wrist? The back of your neck? Where's your mark, Father Tomas from St. Anthony's?"

"I don't..."

"Is my name on you?" He pulled up his sleeve as he stepped closer, quickly. He showed him. He practically brandished the thing at him, because he knew it was him, just like he'd always been told he would if they met. "You'd better tell me, Tomas, because yours is on me." 

Tomas took an unsteady breath. He bowed his head. He closed his eyes. 

"Yes," he said. He crossed one arm over his chest and tapped two fingers against his left shoulder, at the extremity of his collarbone. "It's here." He opened his eyes. He looked at him. "But that's not why I'm here." 

Marcus set his hands on his hips. He raised his brows. 

"Oh?"

"What can you tell me about demonic possession?" Tomas asked.

Marcus almost laughed him straight back out the door. He did make him leave, in no uncertain terms. 

And then, because he couldn't not, he went to Chicago.

*

After they'd saved Casey, Tomas remembered nothing about what had happened. Marcus thought that maybe wasn't a bad thing, except he remembered nothing else, either. 

Six months on, it's not like there's nothing there. He remembers skills, like how to drive a car with a shitty automatic gearbox, and how to connect his smartphone to free coffee shop wifi while he orders a latte, and how to to read Heaven's Alphabet. That last part was what Marcus tested first, after he'd taken him from the hospital. Not _picked up_ but _taken_.

"What does this say?" he asked, when Tomas woke up in the back of the van that he'd pinched to get them out of town. He pushed up his left shirtsleeve and held out his arm to him. 

"Tomas," he replied. 

"And this?" he asked, when he'd pulled Tomas's undershirt collar over almost all the way to his shoulder. He handed him a rubbish little mirror he'd picked up in a pharmacy while shopping for painkillers and bottled water and all the things he thought that they might need. 

"Marcus." 

"This is you," Marcus said, tapping at his own arm. He reached out. He rested one hand at Tomas's shoulder, his thumb rubbing the mark. "And this is me. You understand?"

"You're my soulmate?"

"What do you think?"

Tomas paused, then he nodded. When Marcus untied his hands, he almost expected him to try to run, except he didn't; all he could think was Tomas felt it, too. They carried on together. 

"When did we find each other?" Tomas asked him, later, when they stopped to eat dinner in a diner around dusk. 

"It's not been long," Marcus replied. 

"How did we meet?"

"Well, you stormed into a home for washed up old priests and asked me to exorcise a girl named Casey Rance." 

"You're a priest?"

"Excommunicated, technically, but yes."

"Am _I_ a priest?"

"Probably a better one than I am."

"But we're..." He gestured vaguely. 

"We're what?" Marcus asked, over the tabletop, still looking at his food. "We're a bit far from your parish? We're exorcists?"

"We're..." Tomas leaned closer, on his elbows on the chipped formica. His voice lowered. "We're having sex?"

Marcus looked across at him and laughed so loudly that six different people turned to look. 

"No," he said. "And three days ago, you wouldn't have given that a second thought." 

They moved on soon after; Bennett had given them a name, and they had somewhere to be. But that hushed question stayed with him.

*

"It's not that I think you're lying..." Tomas says. 

"Yeah, it's just that you don't believe me."

Tomas smiles. "Something like that," he replies. 

Marcus has tried to explain who Tomas is and who they are, but something in Tomas has refused to believe him. He doesn't believe him even now. 

When they walked into this room forty minutes ago, Marcus expected nothing. They've been travelling together for six months, living out of holdalls they stuff into the back seat of a series of terrible vehicles of various descriptions that may or may not deliver them to their next destination, or into overhead racks on cross-country buses. They know each other's awful habits. Marcus wonders if Tomas had any of them before he forgot. 

When they walked into this room forty minutes ago, Tomas started stripping like he was about to take a shower. He paused at the mirror that's bolted crudely to the wall. He rubbed the mark there at his shoulder. 

"You know, the Ottomans used to put people like us to death," Tomas said. He glanced at Marcus in the mirror, who was sitting at the end of one over-starched twin bed. "They called it the Devil's Handwriting." 

"Well, have you ever met a pair of soulmates?" Marcus asked. "I did once. I wouldn't recommend it." 

"You didn't get along?"

"Too infatuated with each other to even know I was alive." 

Tomas raised his brows pointedly. Marcus flopped dramatically onto his back and rubbed his face with both his hands. 

"You know, you were the one who wanted us to work together like this," he said. "You were the one who said we could be whatever this is and still keep our fucking vows." 

"That doesn't sound like me," Tomas replied.

Marcus sighed. "Well, it was before. I told you _no_ , and you told me _yes_." 

He heard Tomas move. Tomas straddled his hips. "I changed my mind," he said, and Marcus laughed. For once, he didn't say no, though he'd said no a hundred times; now, here they are. 

*

Tomas stripped him. Somehow, that almost made it harder and not easier, seeing his hands on his skin.

Tomas kissed him. Somehow, Marcus had always known _platonic_ wouldn't last, but he hadn't expected to give in to it so cheaply. 

Now Tomas has his legs around Marcus's waist and one hand pressed to the mark at the crook of his arm. Not every matching pair of soulmates meets. It's more common these days, but it's not not guaranteed, and Marcus knows there's people out there who'd literally kill for what they have. Tomas is tight around him, breathless, flushed, and Marcus's back aches, and his head swims, and he knows he should never have made a vow he couldn't keep. Tomas has been in his life since before he was born. He should have known. It's right there in his name in that neat black script at the end of Tomas's collarbone and honestly, he can't make himself feel guilty for it. The only thing that he regrets is this version of Tomas can't remember the old one.

"When was the first time we did this?" Tomas asks, his voice strained, as Marcus's cock pushes up deep inside him, again and again. 

"Now," Marcus replies, exasperated. "Right now." He shoves in hard. His shoulders creak and Tomas groans. " _This_ is the first time, Tomas. Now." 

Tomas looks stunned. For once, it looks like he believes him, and that's pretty much all it takes to finish Marcus off. He comes in him, so suddenly it almost almost knocks him flat.

The only consolation he has is they were always going to end up here - he knows that's what soulmates mean. It's either going to make them great at what they do or take it all away.

*

"You know," Marcus says, once it's over, when they're sitting side by side against the headboard. "When I was younger, I used to think it might be good to have a soulmate. I wondered who it might be. I wondered when we might meet. I looked forward to it."

Tomas's mouth twists into a small, wry smile. "I know," he says. "And then God gave you me." 

Marcus cups Tomas's jaw in both his hands. He rests their foreheads together, lightly. 

"Oh, Tomas," he says. "I don't think God has anything to do with it."


End file.
